While looking for the reasons why the Minnesota Wild are out of the playoffs, aside from the team’s lack of success on the ice, the Star-Tribune’s Michael Russo did some digging into why it’s harder for teams to make the playoffs out of the Western Conference rather than the Eastern Conference and came up with some pretty staggering figures.

West is 155-85-28 vs East. This means the West has taken 338 points in
meetings between East and West, the East just 263. So, the West
essentially ‘took’ 75 points (338-263) in those common games out of the
East standings and put them into the West standings.

I know you’re probably asking, “Does this guy think we’re that dumb” right now, but actually seeing what the points disparity is is rather alarming. Russo also points out the effect the overtime “charity point” has on the proceedings as well.

If you add up all points gained West teams the total is 1332. If you add up all point totals for East teams the number is 1266. Difference is 66 more points in the West.

Yes, there’s a two point difference but would you really expect everything to go over smoothly when dealing with all the free points that get handed out? For what it’s worth, Minnesota has 80 points this year which would put them in the thick of the fight for the playoffs in the East but is only good for 13th and out of the playoffs in the West.